Student Project Assignment

Under the guidance of U.S. instructors, students will apply the principles of globalization and competences to solve a real-world problem with global significance.  

Project Topics

Students will work in teams to complete the project, with no more than four members in a team. Each team is required to choose a topic from one of the following recommended topics. 

Topic #1: Global Expansion

Students pick up a multinational company and analyze the following areas for that company:

  • The company’s globalization strategy
  • The company’s global operations
  • The company’s global competitive advantage and the way it was built

Sample Companies:

  • General Motor (GM)
  • Boeing
  • IBM
  • Apple
  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Toyota

The chosen company must have significant global operations (including global Research & Development, sales, and other functional departments worldwide), with at least 50% of its revenue coming from global market. A company who is only exporting its products to global market is not qualified for the project. 

When choosing a company, a team must be able to find resources to answer the following questions for the particular company: How did the company’s global expansion happen and why? How was the company’s global competitiveness built? If the basic questions cannot be answered by the students, it is recommended for the students to choose a different company.

Topic #2: Global Innovation

Silicon Valley (California, USA) is without a doubt the gravitational center of technological innovation and entrepreneurship. If choosing this topic, students analyze the following factors contributing to the Silicon Valley phenomena: 

(1) The hardware assets, such as capital, talent, and infrastructure.

(2) The soft assets, such as culture, social network, innovative spirit, role model, collaboration, entrepreneurship, motivation, policy, etc.

Topic #3: NGO 

Students analyze the impacts of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) on world growth, and their roles in enforcing international regulations, monetary agreements, and trade rules.

Topic #4: Global Engineering

Students analyze the globalization of engineering and its impacts on global competitiveness. Some of the focuses are as follows:

  • Engineering constraints   
  • Sustainable development
  • Global issues in engineering
  • Social, ethical issue in engineering

Topic #5: Global Economy

Students analyze the globalization of economy and its impacts on one or more of the following areas: 

  • Innovation
  • Manufacturing
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Business ecosystems
  • Global talents
  • Capital markets

Project Deliverables

Each team will submit a team essay at the end of the course. During the entire course period, students will deliver team presentations with the following sub-topics: 

(1). Current Situation:

The minimum deliverable for this team presentation: 

  • The current situation for the target (i.e. what is happening now) 
  • The global significance of the target
  • Team must use facts to support statements

(2). Causes and Effects: 

The minimum deliverable for this team presentation:

  • The cause that leads to the current situation
  • The analysis must be from: 
    • personal perspective
    • local perspective
    • global perspective
    • cross-cultural perspective.
  • Use facts to support statements

(3). Future Scenarios/Trends

The minimum deliverable for this team presentation:

  • Visualize and describe what would be the future scenarios or trends 
  • Use analysis and imagination  

(4) Possible Solutions

The minimum deliverable for this team presentation:

  • Propose possible solutions to address the issues or solve the problems associated with the topic.

(5) Courses of Action

The minimum deliverable for this team presentation:

  • Propose a plan or method to be used for achieving a specific goal within the proposed solutions.

(6) Individual Reflection

At the end of the course, each student will submit an individual essay with the following topics:

  • Personal evaluation/comments on the entire team project
  • Personal contributions to the team project
  • Personal learning from the team project.

Project Requirements

  • Statements, arguments or judgments must be supported by evidence. For example: the following statement does not have specific evidence: “Studies show that countries that were more integrated into the world economy grew faster than those that were less integrated”;
  • Identify and analyze key issues associated with the topic;
  • Distinguish between fact, opinion, prediction and value judgement;
  • Identify and evaluate possible future scenarios and courses of action;
  • Take into account different perspectives on issues.